Anssi blinked down at the boy's feet. "Oh. Why are you wearing no socks?" More importantly: did this mean that he would have to go find another partner to talk to? The Professor didn't seem to be watching them, but that didn't make Anssi feel okay about breaking the rule about only talking to people with the same colour socks as himself. Ruben would probably laugh at him for that. (Well, Ruben would probably laugh at the whole thing; he only really saw his big brother for short times in the summer, but Ruben barely wore socks then, and Anssi assumed that was a pattern which continued beyond summer, too.) In his life experience so far, barely double-digits, Anssi had found that following rules had not always improved situations but never got him in a worse position, either. He didn't see anything wrong with listening to the rules, even if the Professor's rule had been a bit strange.

Backwards as it was, the blonde was saved his worrying when the other boy kept talking to him. They still didn't have the same colour socks and they were still breaking the rule, but it wasn't really Anssi's fault, now. He had approached the other boy first. Now the other boy was talking even more. Keeping talking to him was the polite thing to do. Anssi felt relieved at this, and then almost immediately appalled, going bright red at the reminder that he hadn't even introduced himself yet - that was even ruder! But then there wasn't time to introduce himself properly because the other boy was asking questions and questions were hard. He was okay at asking questions, but thinking about answers took so much focus!

"I am finlandssvenska." Okay, that was an easy answer, but probably it made no sense to anyone except finlandssvenskar. "I am from Sweden, but..." He paused, struggling to find an explanation. His cheeks felt even warmer now. "...but a place of Sweden that... is also Finland." That would have to do. Fidgeting with the ends of his sweater, tied around his waist, Anssi frowned as he tried to figure out the rest of what the boy had said. He thought that cool was partnered to cold. Mamma had set out the sweater with his clothes for him this morning after explaining that RMI was very far north of Texas, not nearly as north as Umeå but north enough that it would be colder. But his voice was cold, too? Maybe the other boy (yes, he had already forgotten his name) could tell from his voice that Anssi was from a more-north place.

Anssi looked around and saw that some of the other students were going to get food. Including a very excited-looking girl with excited hair, which was an even better reason for him to keep talking to the boy with no socks. Anssi didn't Do very well with 'excited'. "Have you any hungry?" he ventured hesitantly. "I want a cookie."

Clayton could not believe this was happening. The moment he arrived at RMI he tried extremely hard to take in as much as he could in as little amount of time as possible. He kept turning back to his... more

Clayton was caught off guard by the boy’s question. He didn’t really have an answer as to why he wouldn’t be wearing socks, mostly because the more he thought about it he didn’t actually have a solid ... more